


Wedding Dance

by ShannonPhillips



Series: A Little Less Attitude and a Little More Altitude [12]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:59:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4396343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hera’s walking out of the crowd to meet them. She looks flushed, she’s breathing heavily, and she’s stripped off most of her flight suit—she’s wearing only her loose white shirt and close-fitting thermal leggings.</p><p>Kanan, concerned, instinctively reaches out through the Force—but he senses no pain or fear from her. Quite the opposite: she’s happy, relaxed, almost joyful.</p><p>“Look!” she says as they close the distance between them. “It’s a wedding dance! You don’t see this much anymore outside of Ryloth.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wedding Dance

**Author's Note:**

> This short piece was inspired by [rabbit-miza](http://rabbit-miza-draws.tumblr.com/post/124591563488/ouh-ok-i-made-myself-all-shippy-now-hence-this)'s beautiful artwork.

It’s been a long night. The twin moons of Garel have long since set, and the sky is beginning to pale with the oncoming dawn. Kanan, Sabine, and Zeb are trudging back to the Ghost with their illicit cargo—five crates of top-grade medical supplies, a fine take, but getting it involved almost a half-kilometer of belly-crawling (laser alert systems, flying patrol droids) followed by a sizable overland hike to avoid the anti-aircraft detection screens. It’s a relief when the outlines of the small settlement where they left the Phantom appear.

Something’s different, though: there’s a crowd of people gathered outside. Kanan tenses, scanning the perimeter: what’s happened to draw so many folk outside at this early hour?

“Spectre One to Phantom,” he tries. “We’re back in range, what’s going on?”  
  
Hera’s voice crackles over the comlink. “I see you! I’m waving!”

“Oh, there she is,” Sabine says: and indeed, Hera’s walking out of the crowd to meet them. She looks flushed, she’s breathing heavily, and she’s stripped off most of her flight suit—she’s wearing only her loose white shirt and close-fitting thermal leggings.

Kanan, concerned, instinctively reaches out through the Force—but he senses no pain or fear from her. Quite the opposite: she’s happy, relaxed, almost joyful.

“Look!” she says as they close the distance between them. “It’s a wedding dance! You don’t see this much anymore outside of Ryloth.”

And now that he looks, Kanan sees: it _is_ a dance, although an unusually complicated one. There are dozens of dancers and they’ve arranged themselves into two arms of a spiral, which spins and whirls as the dancers move towards the center. Those who meet in the middle exchange a complicated series of passes and steps, finally flying apart to take their places on opposite ends of the spiral.

And some of the dancers are carrying packages, which seem to trade hands according to a rhythm Kanan can’t detect or predict. They’re all different sizes and shapes; some wrapped in patterned fabrics, some covered in simple paper.

“Have you been dancing?” says Sabine, a teasing smile tugging the corners of her mouth.

Hera tosses her lekku. “I have! They started up just after you left, they’ve been going all night.”

Indeed, scattered around the edges of the dance are children, faces sticky with sweets, who have been put down to sleep on improvised beds of garments and bundles; older folk, seated on blankets or portable chairs, chatting quietly in small groups; and those who seem to be catching their breath before returning to the dance.

“Who’s getting married?” Zeb says curiously.

“Oh, it’s two brides,” says Hera. “There—and there—see the gold embroidery going down the front of their dresses? That’s how you can tell.”

Only one of the brides is Twi’lek, and the community seems composed of a diverse mixture of human and alien species. As he watches Kanan can see that sometimes one of the non-Twi’leks will stumble in the dance, but the group as a whole seems able to incorporate any mis-steps into the larger pattern. There’s a lot of laughter when that happens.

“What are the packages for?” he asks.

“Presents!” says Hera. “Everybody brings presents to a wedding dance. Usually practical things—extra food, power cells, whatever the individual or family can spare. Then all the stuff gets handed around in the dance until it all ends up with whoever needs it most.” She eyes the crates of supplies. “I was wondering—actually—”

Zeb sighs. “Sure, go ahead. I _just_ crawled through a half-kilometer of sticker grass for these, I’ll be picking burrs out of my belly fur for a week, but go ahead. Give ‘em all away.”

Hera smiles. “Not _all_ of them. Spectre Four, Spectre Five, go ahead and load four of these crates into the Phantom. Spectre One can give me a hand getting the last one open.” Her eyes sparkle as she looks him up and down. “And then I’ll teach you to dance,” she says.

“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent dancer,” Kanan says.

“Oh, we’ll see about that.”

He grins as he applies himself to opening the crate. “Hey, Hera,” he says after it snaps open. “You ever…” He tilts his head, indicating the whole scene: dancers, sleeping children, old couples leaning together. “You ever want something like this?”

“A big wedding dance? Nah.” She deftly picks out a few handfuls of supplies—kolto packs, antibacterial agents, one little medical probe droid. “This is for the community, not the brides themselves. The actual marriage would have happened some time ago, and it would have been just the two of them. If they did it the traditional way, all they had to say was ‘I marry you.’ It’s not the dance or the dresses that makes you married—it’s the commitment to tie your lives together forever. You’re married as soon as you make that decision together.”

“I marry you,” Kanan says.

“Yep, that’s all it takes.” After a moment she looks up, and goes still. “Oh. _Oh_.”

Then she puts her arms around him, whispers three words into his ear, and leads him to the dance.


End file.
